Abstract

Our profession operates in a state of identity confusion because we engineering geologists have never engaged as a community in a thorough and profound examination of our profession, to discover and define its core attributes. This paper is a call for such engagement. Acknowledging recent and welcome progress, the theme of this paper nonetheless is that our exploration must be both broader in social context and deeper in introspection if we are to establish a raison d'être for engineering geology that we can all accept and use to nurture its growth in a meaningful way.

Engineering geologists understand the interaction between the built environment and the natural geologic environment. That understanding must be communicated to politicians, business leaders, employers, and clients if our profession is to reach its potential for serving the public good. We must become pro-active active in the political environment. To explain the worth of engineering geology to others, we must come to agreement amongst ourselves as to its core attributes and core worth (value) to humankind.

This paper suggest a raison d'être for engineering geology, its core value to humankind: Engineering geologists benefit humanity by discovering, defining, and analyzing geologically based risks or conditions that affect, or might affect, humans as they utilize and interact with their built and natural environments. This paper further suggests that the core activity of engineering geologists, resulting in a core work product of the same name, is the Engineering Geology Site Characterization.

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